*Automatic Spotting of Assets in a small (20pix perhaps) area around a Ranger.
This may not be feasible for something like Critical Location but most other objects should be revealed when walked or run over.

*Much more assets in the AO especially at low heat or rank level.
Currently at low heat the AO is fairly empty and therefore boring to reccee.
*New assets/ Terrain; Watch Tower, Termite Hill, Jungle Pagodas, Old French Bunker, Swamp, Cluster-Bomb field = Dangerous to enter.

*Equipping Ranger before going on the mission. Seeing the equipment on the Ranger in the Rooster.
An equipment “Locker” showing all available (unlocked) gear.

*Non Ranger characters like the Kit Carson Scout to also be displayed in the rooster and selectable so that he will not automatically go with on every mission.
Could be interesting when more NPCs get coded in.

*Rangers gaining XP after surviving a mission. The current system favors the aggressive method to much and not every ranger is a RTO ace.
– XP gains through memo jobs. Could be dangerous.
– XP through days in theater like 1 per 20 days.

*Smoke Grenade suggestions; Larger cover area per grenade. In Recon the size is to small to be useful as a LOS blocker. More grenades per slot.
Different color smoke. As a LOS blocker, bomb drop, supply drop, Huey extract, cobra support ect..

*Dynamic Intel ; EX: A found Map might reveal some enemy assets or traps. Hand-held-Radio lowers the Overt Counter by 1 since your men know about the enemies movements.
If this becomes “interesting” then a separate topic will be created.

*Extra Ammo Clip(s) as a non-drop item so that the ammo box is not always needed.

*Dynamic Bulk. Dropping or using items should reduce the bulk of that ranger.

*Secondary Weapons rework / active selection..
Increase Point-Blank-Range damage for all pistols.
More secondaries like the Hush-Puppy silenced pistol, maybe place some weapons into the secondaries slot like the MAC10, M79, Knife and other HtH weapons, other small combat items too.
OR
Leave it as is but take out the selection box and automatically switch a Ranger to his pistol once out of ammo. Maybe option to drop the primary weapon.

*Take Down and Snatching reworking.
Currently a ranger with a knife automatically does a take-down and without a Snatch.
Snatched enemy options rework.
Intel gain through interrogation (Viet Skill) could be randomly automatic and eliminating a prisoner should always be silent but may not always be successful, escape.

*Hand to hand damage is to low for Rangers. A farmer is to often a ninja.

*Medical Items rework.
First-Aid-Kit and small medic bag are essentially the same so how about by applying one the ranger gets stabilized (medi skill check) if below 25 health and healed for a random amount up to 15 hp.
For the IV-bag it can be 25hp healed over a period of a few minutes as with medic healing in mnb2/3. A large-med-bag was on the implementation list. Also heals and stabilizes randomly but better then IV-Bag.
Morphine stays the same.

*Ground Movement Sensor rework. More bulk 2-5. Suggestions;
– Automatic direction and range display per contact when a ranger is in operating range maybe every 5 seconds. Maybe displayed on the Map.
– Informs you over a separate radio channel of movement in that area.

*Rework the insertion choppa, flight and ranger drop.
– ABORT option as long as the rangers are still on the choppa for hot LZs.
– On-route extra information like actual weather in AO, radio signal strength,ect.
– Insertion Options; Fake insertion to get the QRF to go somewhere else in the AO but can cause a larger QRF to come along.
Clear the LZ with Arty or Bombs or on board weapons.
– Upgradeable Choppa Weapons;mini-Gun(s), Rockets, Upgrade Chopaa to CH-47 Chinook with heavy armament and more HP.

*Include a Yellow Skull in the Overt mechanic that activates when Overt but not spotted by the enemy.
– Functions; Temporary enemy range increase; Does not make the overt counter go up; Random chance for QRF.

*Main OP map divided into different sections with each having different heat or other specialties.

*Memo Special Missions / Forced missions.

*more random Special Ranger Traits like with J.Rambo or just a regular extreme strong dude.

*McGuire Rig to extract from anywhere.

*An equipment slot only for weareables that may show in items but can not be buddy used.
– More wearables; Camo-Uniform, Better Boots, Rain-Gear, Jungle Hat vs thirst, Sunglasses +5%spot, Helmet increases Thirst, Better utility harness increases every item by 1 that has more then 1 use.

*Memos that are date related like Ted-Offensive and more good memos like USO Show to raise moral.

*Instruction Booklet for the basics in the HQ like in MNB:Vietnam since the fade-away insertion instructions are insufficient.
New players have big problems to grasp the game.

*Shovel as an Item for small defensive position, HtH weapon and increases Demo Skill.

*Enemy voices to Vietnamese; Dorkly sound file?

*More Weather/Climate effects like Heavy Rain, Storm, ect
– Change Hot Day effect so that having Extra Water with you becomes a passive/ automatic action to drink for every ranger that is suffering from heat in buddy range.

*Mission Log (not radio log).
– Gives actual mission parameters and stand, secondary mission stand (from memo too), and stats (% covered, enemy killed, spotted) regarding current mission without having to use the radio for sit-rep and contact report.
Also records activities in the AO and Spotted (bird dog or other) placements.
– Radio log can go or leave out this info if this is in.

*OV10 Bronco close support under Fast-Air radio channel. Functions like CAS.
– OH6 Cayuse support under Bird Dog radio channel. As bird dog but better but can cause overt/yellow overt.

*Different Radios or Antennas to change on the Radio.
– EX: Smaller radio that only works well with Bird Dog relay.
– Larger radio with much bigger antenna for better radio reception.
– To the Mast-Antenna a larger antenna as an Item for the Radio.

I think implementing an arrow marking general direction of enemy voices would really help commanders refine their stealth gameplay. Currently, whenever I hear VC make sound, I have no idea where it’s coming from. In real life, wouldn’t my Rangers have a general idea of where to look or focus their vision when VC make some noise? Whenever VC make noise, maybe we could have a small arrow pop up for a split second to notify us of its direction; we could also introduce a bit of randomness so the arrow wouldn’t always be completely accurate and make things too easy.

Well since the enemies go strait towards any sound that the Rangers make it does seam fair that when a Ranger HEARS something that he will point in that direction just like spotting something but he should then say a different text like ; “I heard something from over there”.
Maybe only 1 Ranger should do this and then there be a 10 second break to this detection type so that not all 4 keep repeating themselves every few seconds.

While it is rather easy to simply pan around the AO and listen to conversations or when found to center on a group it is nerve wrecking when you hear enemy noise (woods crackling or sneeze) but have no idea where it came from.
Just standing still for a while and wait for someone to spot the enemy is very time consuming and in my view drags out the game a bit to much.

The idea to have a sense of noise direction is an old popular suggestion.
Good job at posting that here jafarcakes. (LOL name indeed)

Lol thanks Lance, you made a good point about adding a break otherwise it’d be pretty funny/annoying to see your Rangers caught in an endless loop. If the Rangers do point, should they automatically go back to looking in the direction they were facing previously? Should the Ranger closest to the noise be the one to point? Lots of questions… Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it. And I got the idea for the name from this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLXmyau8Tmc lol

I Like all the suggestions and i’d love to these implemented in recon to make the game even more glorious for us commanders around er.More effective ways to use our command effectively in the AO are always appreciated in my book.

I think Rangers should be able to have a tomahawk which increases CQC skill and can be used without triggering overt status. I think it should be unlocked by kill card. I am not too sure about the second thing but maybe an M-16a1 which was used in Vietnam . It would be like an M-16 but except with 3 round magazines and lower jam chance. Maybe even some bayonets for rifles and stuff but idk.

This game is fantastic, and still has huge potential. Love mnb2 also. Have only been playing this for a few days, and am having a great time, here are some quick observations/suggestions.

Traps – I think there are a few too many, and it seems they are laid out a bit too randomly. You’d expect positions like lzs, approaches to enemy positions, trails, caches etc. to be possibly trapped, but not a trap just out in the middle of the bush somewhere nobody has ever been. I lose far more guys to traps than enemy fire. Not sure how hard it is to code a more plausible layout for traps. Also if possible it would be nice if enemy assets and intel source locations could be trapped. It would make more sense, and give your demolitions guy something to do. On a side note, the demo guy could possibly be renamed engineer. And again, the quantity of traps is a bit much (for me), when I get up to 20% heat + there’s traps everywhere. Speaking of heat –

Heat – I don’t see any incentive to over 10% heat, besides having more things to shoot at. It’s easy to start every mission at 0% heat and still do well for score and progression. Makes things a bit boring, but then I can’t really justify going up to 20% and walking into landmines every mission from a strategic standpoint. There should be more penalties for staying at low heat / incentives for going to high heat.

Intel – I like the idea of gathering intel, but the intel you get on the premission briefing I’ve found to be routinely wrong. One thing is traps. ‘Very few’ devices on 0 heat means very few or none. ‘Very few’ on 30% heat means 50 traps. So the determining factor for traps seems to be heat, not the mission intel. Same with the enemy forces – detachment of militia can mean anything from a few militia to 20 nva. Perhaps this is because some mission types have a ‘mission specific’ force, and then the intel just gives you the numbers of any ‘general’ troops stationed. Regardless, if intel can be off by so much, it is worse than having no intel at all, as you are not then led to a false anticipation of what you’ll be facing. So I just ignore all intel and guess based on mission type and heat.

Regarding hard intel, it’s pretty cool. I think it’s been suggested before that there could be more dynamic intel types. At least to start the intel amount could vary, like a radio gives you 3 and one day you might get lucky and hit the motherload ‘command maps’ or whatever that gives you 20. Would give a kind of ‘treasure hunt’ aspect to it instead of always 5.

Skills – I really like the fact that your rangers are generally trained and competent in everything, and that you can’t have a superman specialized in everything. Couple of issues though. One I’m sure everyone is aware of is that the skills are very uneven in value. Spotting is vital, stealth would be nice if you had more than 7 total possible assignable skillpoints, but you don’t so it’s worthless as I don’t see why you’d ever pick it over spot (open to argument). Medic is kind of useless, the gear doesn’t stabilize long enough, if one of your guys is critical you’ll probably be looking to evac anyway, med evac etc. Comms is a good skill, though more for ease of frustration than efficiency. If you don’t want to have to keep resending your messages, choose comms. Demolitions is almost entirely useless, right now. Viet is situationally useful / meh / not good enough to choose over spot.

So, right now I am skilling my guys like this – squad leader all spot, comms guy 2 comms, hope for a comms training, the rest spot. Medic guy 1 medic, the rest spot. Demo guy 1 demo, mainly for roleplay, 1 viet, mainly for roleplay, the rest spot. Skilling guys like this is a bit boring. Suggested quick stopgap fix – raise default spot skill for rangers significantly, lower per point spot skill benefit, so the cap in skills remains the same, or just remove ‘spot’ skill entirely (how do you really train ‘spot’ anyway?), and associate aspects of the skill with the other skills – high viet makes you better at spotting enemy caches and some sites, high demo (enginner) makes you better at spotting traps, high combat better at spotting troops, high comms better at spotting retranmission sites – whatever. All these bonuses would be fairly minor, useful, but not altogether necessary. So that the spot skill is devalued.

This would allow you to put some of your very low amount of points into other skills.

Enemy / wounds-

I speak Chinese so it’s funny to hear what they say in a Dongbei accent 😀 . Not a bit problem until get Vietnamese ones. I think enemy should be capable of being critically wounded too, with possible enemy medics. Maybe stabilize a critical enemy yourself and take prisoner, not sure if this was ever done irl. Also wounded soldiers should have a chance of making noise (if you get half your leg blown off, chances are you won’t be too happy about it, if you’re conscious). This can give away your position to the enemy. Chances to make noise (cry out in pain) periodically could be dependent on experience or medals etc.

That’s about it for now, had a bunch of other stuff I forget. Thanks and looking forward to this game becoming even more awesome, really admire the style.

Some interesting suggestions/comments, @badger, especially coming from a new player with new eyes. But maybe this is not the thread to comment all of this. This is to post ‘old curated’ ideas already discussed, not new ones (although few of your suggestions were already discussed). So I won’t comment all your suggestions in this thread, but I agree that Recon needs some balance in many of its aspects. Probably future new memos, new ribbons and their conditions, FORCED missions, new HVTs etc… may solve this, even partially.